WikiProject Council
General information Main page talk    To-do list    Templates Contacts talk WikiProject guide Introduction talk    WikiProjects    Task forces    Technical notes Resources Assessment FAQ Directory talk Proposals talk Newsletters talk · changes

Shortcut: WP:COUNCIL

This is not really a proposal, per se, and most certainly not a policy. It is merely an attempt at fostering better collaboration between already existing groups; what more it might produce or become depends entirely on the ideas and inclinations of the participants.

The WikiProject Council is a group of Wikipedians gathered to encourage—and assist with—the development of active WikiProjects, and to act as a central point for inter-WikiProject discussion and collaboration.

Objectives

Development

• Provide recommendations on current best practices in WikiProject structure and operation, and encourage and assist individual WikiProjects interested in adopting these ideas.
• Accept proposals or requests for new projects, and assist in their creation; or, alternately, point those making the requests to the appropriate existing projects when applicable ones already exist.
• Assist WikiProjects with taking a more active role in the development of the encyclopedia, particularly by encouraging the adoption of various ways of ensuring the production of high-quality articles.

Coordination

• Maintain a comprehensive directory of active WikiProjects and the notable departments or programs (such as article assessments, peer reviews, or collaborations) associated with each.
• Assist in coordinating the work of independent sub-projects with their parent projects, and of projects having overlapping scopes with each other.
• Provide a central forum for discussions on issues of interest to a wide range of WikiProjects, including inter-project collaborations and Wikipedia-wide programs.

Consolidation

• Look for common elements or subtasks of multiple WikiProjects that should become their own projects and which should precede or inform other projects or potential projects. For instance, projects that identify a list of POV assumptions, names or words should probably precede projects that attempt to vet articles of such assumptions, names or words.
• Help identify who's we in any project proposal, article or talk page statement in which "we" (meaning some subset of users or readers of Wikipedia) are named. Ideally, any use of "we" would be linked to a specific statement of who has committed to the view or project in question, so that newcomers can quickly figure out which group to join or who to complain to.
• Identifying abandoned, censored, lost or suppressed projects that remain valid but were perhaps premature, e.g. early attempts to deal with systemic biases in Wikipedia or attempts to recruit editors in languages or with backgrounds lacking among its current editors.

Merging these where possible into existing projects, or at least linking them as influences or as references in current projects.

Recommendations and resources

Directories

• Directory of WikiProjects
• Proposed WikiProjects, Task Forces and Work Groups
• WikiProject newsletters

Guides

• Guide to WikiProject organization

FAQs

• Article assessment FAQ

Participants

If you are interested in helping out with this project, please add your name to the participants page; please feel free to also indicate any WikiProjects where you are an active member. Central figures in the activity of a WikiProject or Portal are encouraged to also add their names to the list of contacts (we use this list to expedite contact between the various projects).

Current notices

WikiProject Council noticeboard

Igor awaits employment by any WikiProjects seeking his services. He works long hours for little pay, and provides valuable information on article assessment. WikiProject Films is holding an election of project coordinators. Members of the project should feel free to nominate themselves here by September 14 and vote from September 15-28. WikiProject Novels is also establishing coordinators positions, with the elections to take place in May. Candidates are free to list themselves here by March 31. WikiProject Biography is also in the process of examing whether coordinators for their projects, and is also conducting an assessment drive here. WP Computing is being revived. You can join here and/or contribute to the discussion.

To-do

• Complete the Guide to WikiProject organization.
• Delete or merge abandoned or useless projects, as needed.
• Create a more streamlined and useful project proposal page.
• Encourage and assist WikiProjects in adopting the WP:1.0 article assessment program.
• Assist sub-projects interested in integrating their project banners with those of other projects
• Develop a system to funnel peer reviews and other requests to the appropriate WikiProjects.

Templates

Members:

You can show your support for this project by adding yet another userbox to your user page:

{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Userbox}}

This editor is a member of the WikiProject Council.

• If you prefer to Keep It Simple you can use {{User label WPCouncil}} which displays:
  WP:COUNCIL
  
  

Alternatively, to show membership, you can use this banner.

{{WikiProject Council}}

This editor is a member of the WikiProject Council, a collaborative effort regarding WikiProjects in general. Please feel free to join us.

To mark pages of interest to this project:

{{WPCouncil}} or {{WPCOUNCIL}}

The WikiProject banner below should be moved to this page's talk page. If this is a demonstration of the template, please set the parameter |category=no to prevent this page being miscategorised.

	WikiProject Council
	This page relates to the WikiProject Council, a collaborative effort regarding WikiProjects in general. If you would like to participate, please visit the project discussion page.

Navigation bar:

{{WikiProject Council Navigation}}

Footer:
To recommend the use of this footer to be used at a WikiProject's main page, may increase spontaneous sign-up (recruitment), inter-projects collaboration and users responsible participation:

{{WPCouncilRec}}

WikiProject Council would like to inform all Wikipedians that it may be advantageous to: Join WikiProjects of your field of knowledge or interest. This will provide you with a forum in which exchange opinions and identify common goals with respect to articles under that topic, as well as coordinated opportunities to share your knowledge. You may also join Maintenance WikiProjects where the focus is on the organization and functioning of Wikipedia in general. Beware of overloading yourself with WikiProject memberships. Keep involved in a handful of WikiProjects to which you can actively and assiduously contribute. But always be willing to help any WikiProject when you see an opportunity, regardless of membership.

Internal templates

These "template" subpages are used internally on various pages here. Some of them are quite fragile, so please be careful when modifying them.

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide header
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Header
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Links
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/WikiProject
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/WikiProject footer
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/WikiProject header

See also

• Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via Wikiprojects (being slowly updated)
• Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/List of WikiProjects (incomplete at present)
• Proposal for WikiProject reform